Are you hearing the words that are coming out of my mouth?

[guero_gordo]

A fair amount of coach/parent bashing goes on here, I'd like to throw out a few of my own experiences with what may be a pretty commonplace communication problem that what people say and what others hear them say aren't always the same. Two things I see contributing to this are parsing vs. listening, and hearing what you expected to hear.

One situation started because DD(and others) were hearing the constant message "you suck" at every practice. I knew this wasn't what the coach was saying, but engaged him in conversation precisely to make the point that this is what she was hearing(not mentioning the other kids), and that the message he WAS trying to send was being lost. I thought it went fairly well until I hear that the coach had told the team "she hates me", everything I said went to waste because just like the child I was talking about, he parsed meaning by only hearing pieces of what I said.

Another one was when I was talking to coach about DD being in a short slump. During the conversation, I made the mistake of saying something about hitting out of a slump being tough with only 2 AB's a weekend. His response "Well maybe I should take someone else out of the lineup so your DD can strike out more." I wasn't bitching about playing time while she wasn't hitting, but that's what he heard as soon as I was dumb enough to brush up against the topic of playing time.

I've seen parents come away from conversations with the coach believing their kid was guaranteed something when the words "try to" and "opportunity to get time at" completely failed to penetrate.

Typing is frequently no better, I've seen an entire team of parents upset about something the coach typed out on his phone in 3m, when they all read it wrong.

Not bashing or sermonizing, but it's easy to miss a few words and create a misunderstanding that can spiral pretty quickly.

 

[chinamigarden]

This isn't parsing words this is a coach who is a jackass. I understand your point. But the 2 examples you used shows what an immature coach you are dealing with. If you haven't already I would find a new team for the dd

 

[guero_gordo]

Well, yeah maybe not the best examples, and I'm glad to have both in the rearview.

 

[softballphreak]

I sometimes remind players and a couple employees, "Don't just watch my mouth move, listen to the words!"

Also reminds me of a time that my step kids were questioning what we were having for dinner. I said "as much time as your Mom has spent fixing this meal you better hush your mouth." To which my wife promptly replied "if you think you can fix it any damn faster get in here and try."

Sometimes you can't win.

 

[KCPRK]

I find that parents and players can overanalyze information and even add assumptions making meanings distorted.

 

[Jojo]

Welcome to the new world of social media where the art of conversation is a thing of the past.

At least I still live in the south where we can at least sugar coat it a little bit;

"Why yes, sweetie, I can sit suzy on the bench more so your sarah can strike out more, bless her heart".

 

[mike s]

Us northerner's need a "bless her heart" phrase so we can say whatever we want without meaning any offense.

 

[left turn]

What they are doing is called confirmation bias. They are hearing the words they want to hear and ignoring or discounting the words they do not want to hear.

This concept happens more often when the listener has a vested interest in your comments. It can happen when a coach evaluates a player for an all star team or when a parent hears criticism about their child or a talk show radio listener, and many other situations.

People tend to reconfigure what they hear to protect their ego. I believe this is just a part of the human condition. The difference is the extent to which we do it and whether we have awareness of the process.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) said, "We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others."

 

[klamath632]

In my experience, discussing DD's playing time with a coach is not going to be received well by the coach.

 

[guero_gordo]

In my experience, discussing DD's playing time with a coach is not going to be received well by the coach.

Well, as I said, I had no intention of going there, but even in context, AB's was close enough to hit the hot button, mainly because he wasn't listening to context at all.